[history/dolls] So, uh, who wants to never sleep around their stuffed animals again? I've got a creepy doll story! 
YESSSS
Trigger warnings are basically just dolls. Creepy dolls. A really fucking creepy doll I am not kidding.
creepy dolls 
/parks here
I AM READY FOR THIS.
Oooh. 
i hope this is the creepy doll i think it is
/camps here
Creepy Doll - Jonathan Coulton
That's just because the song is stuck in my head now.
Appropriate.
/plants butt
Storytime!
YAY STORY TIME
WHEEEE
Goodness gracious my ping list has grown...
oh fuck me
let's do it
oh hey Krissy 
/SITS HERE 
hey darling I'm on time for once
This one takes place in Florida, too
IT'S YOUR TIME TO SHINE
YESSSS
oh goodie...
(if it's a gator plushie i'm gonna cry)
I AM READY
(it's not a gator plushie you're okay)
I'm in!
/sits and clings to somebody here
SO I'MMA JUST DIVE RIGHT INTO THIS.
Dolls, right? Everyone knows that dolls can be hella creepy.
Dolls have been creepy for about as long as dolls have existed.
And dolls have existed for a long time! The history of evolution of childrens' toys has been wide-ranged and varies from culture to culture, but dolls have almost always been there.
In some shape or form, in every culture, we make tiny little people for kids to play with, and kids love them for lots of reasons.
Dolls can be stand-in for friends, or a way of coping with tough situations or loss... They're very easy to extend imagination onto!
And little kids, especially, are very, very good at projecting personalities onto dolls.
It doesn't matter if they're made of cloth or corn husks or cheap plastic; most of us have probably at one point imagined a whole life and soul into a barbie or a stuffed animal that we loved.
BUT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, you hear stories about dolls that... maybe aren't being projected onto...
That sound kind of like they've... somehow... gained a life of their own...
This is one of those stories. 
Oh man I wonder if this is what I think it is.
IT MIGHT BE.
i really really hope it's what i think it is
I'm waiting for a specific name to pop up
Can I post a picture to see if I'm right...?
YOU HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT.
/bouncing in her seat
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Because I already got u.
Oh no! It's a different one!
this fucker
Ooooo now I'm REALLY eager to hear this
This is Robert.
I was thinking of Annabelle.
I WAS THINKING OF ROBERT
FUCK ROBERT
Is this about Annabelle? 
Annabelle horrifies me so much because I'm already so afraid of Raggedy Ann dolls
Nope! This one is going to be aaaall about Robert.
Robert!!! 
I've heard about him! I just don't remember what I've heard. Staring at that "Warning: Don't Photograph" sign in the background, btw.
Raggedy doesn't look so bad, but the other two... 
Yeah, Robert... He's a looker, ain't he...?
I had a ton of dolls as a kid but I never thought of any of them as creepy
oh christ robert
The story of Robert starts in 1904, in the Florida Keys.
Mainly because they were name-brands and pretty sanitized. Though I do remember old porcelain dolls at a relative's house
OH GOD YES STORY TIME 
(So the doll of Robert is over 100 years old now, which may be part of why he looks so creepy and they don't want you taking photographs).
Specifically, the story starts with the Otto family.
They were very well-off financially, and moved into a lovely Victorian-style mansion out there to settle down and have their third kid, a boy they named Robert Eugene Otto.
Everyone called him Gene, though, after his middle name.
Since they were living the good life, the family also had a lot of staff hired to look after the house, the chores, the cooking, the cleaning, the children, etc.
One of the maids looked after Gene like she was his own son, went with him everywhere, took very good care of him.
Unfortunately, all that we know about her was that she was Bahamian woman... Because in 1904, women were kind of never mentioned in the media for anything because pffft women.
She was also, you know, not white, and hired help, which made her even less likely to be important to any reporters at the time.
SO... WE DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT HER.
But we do know that when Gene was four years old, she gave him this doll.
The doll, to put this in perspective, is three feet tall.
It was almost as big as Gene himself, made out of cloth and stuffed with some kind of straw for the most part.
karmacitadel: oh man I'd never seen the real Annabelle before
He's dressed up in a white sailor suit, in case the costume is kind of hard to discern in the creepy pictures.
And Gene loooooved this doll.
Yeah they had Annabelle on a show along with a cursed chair.
He named the doll Robert, after his real name, and reportedly took it with him everywhere.
Gene and Robert went on family outings together, they played together, they'd get tucked into bed together...
Robert had his own little seat by the dinner table, and Gene would cutely sneak away to go feed Robert little bits of food, it was darling.
Until it... Wasn't.
Which I will explain as soon as I get back from my lunch break dfjksdl (bad timing, whoops).
GEEZ what a cliffhanger
damnit CLIFFHANGERS
(and I mostly know Annabelle from the movies made about the Warrens)
CLIFFHANGER!!
/waits patiently!
the waitening
I have seen Robert.
and yes, it was just because I love creepy stories and places.
/pulls up chair and sits 
I always thought Annabell was creepy just to look at, but egade Robert is creepy
I had a raggedy Anne so I guess that one has no impact for me.
this doll was a menace 
Baby Secret Doll Commercial
Baby Secret Doll Commercial
/waits patiently
AAAHHHH DOLLS ARE SO CREEPY but now I can't look away
most dolls creep me out in general 
Except I have to because must away to work lol
Bounces in anticipation though
I used to have a babydoll that you could 'feed' by putting plastic food and utensils it came with into its mouth
and the buttons in her mouth would react to what you put in
my brother and I used to think it was funny that she would react when you put your fingers in her mouth
with crunching and slurping noises
... I'm pretty sure every kid with that doll would have eventually done that. XD;
ahaha
I'm just like 'wow kids are morbid' looking back on it
klsjdgskljgd bless. best cliffhanger.
Oh man i know robert. I also know the creepy chair and annabelle. Watching true creepy videos fpr fun has its up sides
stuff like this is interesting, but I don't believe in Annabelle as the Warrens are a bunch of frauds (almost all their famous cases are contradicted by hard evidence)
RShini: I love that you said this.
Robert. 
dolls are creepy, always...
SO THERE THEY WERE
/bursts back into the plurk
Gene and Robert, best buddies
having a good time.
Except that things started getting kind of weird...
Like, for instance, the family would often hear Gene talking up in his playroom because he was having pretendy funtimes with his imaginary friends.
But some time after Robert showed up in the house, Gene's mother noticed that his talking started sounding... Like he was really having a conversation with someone.
Gene would speak first, and would sound timid and nervous about whatever he was talking about... And then answer in a different, gruffer voice, and sound really frustrated.
YES THIS ONE CAME UP ON SOMEHING*POSITIVE A LONG TIME AGO
The mother reported that she'd sometimes sneak up to the room and then burst through the door, to see if she could catch whatever Gene was up to
but she'd find him huddled up in a corner and hugging his knees, looking nervous and unhappy, with Robert just... sitting on the edge of the bed and glaring at him.
I say "glaring at him" because the mother went out of her way to describe it as such in her report.
Other weird things started happening too; they'd hear crashing from up in the playroom and run up to find that the place was trashed.
0.o
Furniture knocked over, drawers of stuff spilled all over the floor, that kind of thing.
They started finding other stuff knocked around in other parts of the house, or things moved for no reason, or random messes...
When they tried to ask Gene why he was trashing his playroom or making a mess, he would say, "No, Robert did it."
His parents didn't believe him, of course, but Gene seemed really insistent that it was Robert's fault no matter how many times it happened.
It didn't just affect the Otto family, though, it also affected the staff. They'd come through on night shifts and find plates and dishes smashed on the dining room floor.
Some staff reported going into locked guest rooms for routine cleaning, only to find that the bedspread had been pushed off the side of the bed, or that other random messes had been made.
They'd find clothes and other fabric that had been ripped to shreds by something, but couldn't figure out what was doing it.
Most of the staff were really creeped out by Robert. Some of them even claimed that they saw him blink.
And at night, both the staff and the family heard weird noises coming from around the house. Like thumps. And laughing.
Staff started quitting, because they sure as hell weren't going to keep working in a house with an evil nightmare doll.
Whether or not the doll was actually the culprit, the Ottos wound up having to manage a revolving door of employment. The turnover for hired help was fast, because no one wanted to stick around long.
The parents were getting more and more frustrated with their son, who despite being blamed and punished many times, would always insist that it was Robert doing it, not him.
But the rumors and the constant chaos was costing them--it took a lot of time and money to keep training new workers.
So they continued punishing (and probably severely) Gene for what was happening, while trying to weather all the things that were happening in their house.
Eventually, they started noticing that some of these things could not have possibly been Gene's fault--like hearing laughter on one side of the house while Gene was asleep in his bed on another.
Or staff finding messes in the house when none of the family was home.
Eventually, some extended family stepped in to try and help.
Saying what we're all thinking, an aunt visited and told them that the doll was the problem. It was possessed by something evil, and they needed to get rid of it.
The parents finally put Robert in a box, which they then put up in the attic where he would hopefully be out of the minds of the family.
That night, the visiting aunt died.
She was an older woman, so the official story is that she died of perfectly normal old-person problems... But the Otto family apparently didn't believe that.
The following day, Robert was brought back out of the box and returned to the house. The chaos continued, and that's just kind of how things were in that house from then on.
But wait. It gets better.
Eventually, Gene grew up and moved out of the house.
aah, dolls can be so creepy. /clings to own stuffed animal that still sleeps in her bed
He became a painter, he got married, the Otto parents eventually passed away.
Gene moved back into the old mansion house with his wife.
Robert was still there, of course. And Gene, now a full-grown adult, reportedly started carrying him around the house with him.
He'd take Robert from room to room with him. Robert would sit with them at dinner. Robert would sit on a chair next to the bed while he and his wife slept.
...that is a terrible plan Gene.
Gene's wife hated the doll, and for good reason...
She tried to get him to get rid of it, and for a while, Gene locked Robert up in a box and put him back up in the attic.
But... They'd hear thumping and scraping noises from up in the attic, in the dead of night, and sometimes hear laughter from other parts of the house when no one should have been there.
Gene eventually brought Robert back out of the attic again.
There are a couple of reported instances of people walking by the house and seeing the doll, oh, moving from room to room on its own through the windows.
Or glaring out the window at the street below.
You know, evil haunted doll stuff.
Gene's wife eventually committed suicide.
Gene eventually died as well, in the mid seventies, and he died with Robert tucked into bed next to him.
........ 
I'm glad it had a happy ending
woooooow
what happened to the doooolllllll D:
I'm surprised no one ever suggested an exorcism of some sort
I'm surprised no one suggested leaving Gene
hey at least gene passed with his best friend by his side
...that's kind of terrifying but also sweet at the same time :c
throw it into the fire
do it
but in the end... it was his precious
Whelp.
I'm surprised no one caught an animal moving around or diagnosed schizophrenia
(I am the worst Beatrice the Golden player ever)
given the era, Divorce was considered pretty much unthinkable
and a far more labored, arduous process
Oh, but hey guys...
There's more. 
Ohh? More 8D
Yep! Because Robert wasn't donated to the museum until 1994.
there's more what
Oh ho ho ho yes there is more to this story.
........oh dear fluffy christ
of course 
Holy crapola
SO...
After Gene passed away, the house remained unoccupied for a while.
Possibly because of the rumors of it being the house with the creepy evil doll guy, but that's just my speculation.
But eventually, a new family bought the house and moved in. The house still had some of the things from the old family in it, including Robert the doll.
The parents did not like Robert the doll. At all.
the only proper response, really
If I'm remembering right, the wife was immediately really creeped out by Robert and thought he looked menacing.
Their small daughter didn't like the doll even more.
She told her parents that the doll was mean, and that on one occasion, the doll outright tried to attack her.
Well.
This is the family that eventually donated Robert to the museum.
But they didn't do it out of, you know, a want to preserve creepy Floridian history.
Allegedlyand this is just the story I've heardthey made the decision to finally get rid of Robert on one particular night.
PLURK, PLEASE.
I'M TRYING TO BE DRAMATIC.
But anyway.
The final straw came when the parents were woken up by some noise in the room.
The father sat up, turned on the light, and froze in horror,
because there was Robert, at the foot of the bed, holding a kitchen knife in his little doll hand.
WELL FUCK
well SHIT
...and thaaaaat's when they decided to donate him.
Robert, you need to calm the fuck down
As some of you have seen yourself, Robert is still in the Fort East Martello Museum!
Displayed behind him are a bunch of apologetic letters written from people who took his photo without permission.
JESUS
ROBERT, COULD YOU NOT.
And that's the story of Robert the doll!
sooo creeppyyyyy
Could this have all been a string of coincidences? Was half of this fabricated and fed by the rumor mill? Entirely possible.
I wouldn't be surprised if half of the story is missing, honestly.
BUT DANG IS IT SPOOKY.
he sees what you're doing there
I knew this was about Robert and I was not disappointed.
wasn't he the inspiration for the Chuckie movies?
So he behaves now?
.... well, here's something fun. 
Robert The Doll A Real Haunted Doll Watch his eyes at the 1:00 mark.
Robert The Doll A Real Haunted Doll Watch his eyes at the 1:00 mark.
nope nope shant
XD wow
wellllllll that's creepy as fuck
nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope
ojoj
I told the story and I'm not going to watch the video djfksl
DOLLS ARE CREEPY.
I know my dolls/toys wouldn't kill me. They're good toys (even if getting them dry after a wash is a pain in the butt.)
fun story: I could never sleep with the dolls in my room facing me. it would freak me out.
it could have been edited
that's what I am telling myself :c
Just burn the doll, people!
that could make things worse tho
Schensul: If you go to Key West, Fla., beware of Robert the Doll ... There's a protocol to taking his photo, you have to introduce yourself and say thank you.
No! I am a problem solver.
But why Robert. Why. Gene was good to you. What happened.
It's 3am where I am, I am not watching that video at the witching hour 
and oh god T_T woman why.
Oh hey, that museum with the other creepy doll, Annabelle, is taking her out in March for a show, in a restaurant.
yeah I
am tempted to leave a comment on that article apologizing
shit
inherentinthesystem: DO IT
but does he read the youtube comments? that's the real question
Don't worry, guys. I watched a video of him before and nothing's happened to me.
More scary stories are great. c:
ah I'd love to see a plurk on the winchester house!
I would be all over that plurk took. :>
I don't know if I could replurk it, but... /weighs hands
since privacy settings...
but we could find something...
I WANT TO MAKE THIS WORK
What if Storytime made the initial plurk here, then inherentinthesystem took over from there?
I still have my lion i was given as a child in my room. Since my cat tends to attack him he no longer sleeps with me but sits on top of my book case, watching over the room
He's a good boy tho, he won't turn evil
omd the article makes it creepier
...this sounds like at least part of it is some kind of psychological disorder on Gene's part, but the rest? Mother fucking Robert...
(also at the Annabelle picture on the very top, I was laughing so hard at the Devil tarot card they put over it)
...and people's misunderstanding of the tarot continues /sigh
I know, I'm not really sure what they.... were thinking was gonna happen.....?
Like, DID YOU JUST PUT IT THERE BECAUSE IT'S SPOOKY
I thought they were using it to imply the doll was demonic, but that's not actually what the Devil card means...
Yeah...
Like, good to know you're safe from... temptation...? Addiction...????
(or any number of other meanings that definitely aren't "I will ward off haunted dolls")
Thank you so much for another fascinating story! I'm so glad I asked to be on the ping list. :3
This was an awesome story
I never thought as a kid that dolls could be creepy outside of that one Twilight Zone ep
... and this is why i gave back the musicbox doll
okay, i actually gave her back to grandma because she would start playing in the middle of the night
My grandmother collected dolls and they were always sitting on the back of their sofa..... It fucking creeped me out all the time.
Because her dolls always kinda gave me the creeps.... I mean... I had a few on my own when I was way younger... but somehow... the older I got the more spooked I got from dolls.... .-.
what do you expect from a pair of professional frauds? Annabelle's curated by the couple that help perpetuate the Amityville House hoax
... of course she is.
/head in hands/
Yes
And then they made a Simpsons takeoff of it
Thanks for the awesome story. Human dolls can be very creepy...but none of my stuffed toys are creepy cuz they're all animals lol
Man this is so creepy. I didn't know Chuckie was based on a real doll dang.
Thanks for another good one! Do you mind adding me to the pinglist?
the gif freaked me out you got me fucked up if you think I'll watch the video
...you know, add me to the pinglist as well?
eeeeep large dolls 
i never really wanted humanoid dolls when i was a kid (unless they were little plastic Barbies and the like), only animals. suddenly i understand why.
man I love these plurks
Finally off work and aw HELL no
OH MAN I LOVE THIS PLURK
OH THIS GUY. /late to the party
/silently screaming
/silently screaming
So. The other thing I didn't see mentioned is that the servant reportedly had issues with the family other than Gene too...
Well... never wanted humanoid plushies myself... I collected all the animals... but my mother loves these Monchichi's 
these already creeped my out from the beginning
Is Robert still wandering the museum at night?
Last I heard he was
I'd love to see that. Actually, no, I wouldn't. But I like hearing about it
why did I read two articles about him this morning cries
Oooh. I'd love to be added to the pinglist for this '^'
Oh man, I wonder if my brother knows about this. He hates dolls and couldn't even look at the American Girl doll my niece got for Christmas.
I'd love to be on the ping list as well!!
My friend told me a scary doll story once, so my mom got the carol motion doll out of the basement, put a knife in her hand where the candle was supposed to go, and called me downstairs . . .
A+ parenting skills right there
omg
momtrayal
My grandma had two large, toddler sized plastic dolls that lived in the guest bedroom.
Guess where my sister and I slept if we stayed over with her?
In the living room. I would
that's terrifying
the toddler-sized dolls i mean
They were the kind that their eyes would close if you tiled them back...but I swear, when it was dark? Their eyes moved.
Momtrayal for sure.